In this column I have previously outlined what I believe are the key principles for a contemporary and effective Industrial Strategy.

The UK ranks third in the world for start-up businesses but not so well in the follow-up phase. The Business Growth Fund has demonstrated that there is significant demand for funding small and medium-sized businesses that have gone past the start-up stage.

We have a long way to go, however, in performing as well as the US in this crucial area of the economy.

I have been a long-standing and committed supporter of start-ups through my role as a “business angel”. Angel investors are typically established entrepreneurs and business leaders.

In addition to deploying our own cash in seeding highly innovative, often disruptive and inevitably risky, new businesses, we are passionate about mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs.

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26th April 2016, Belfast and Cambridge, UK: Queen's University Belfast and Domainex Ltd. announced today that they have secured a late-stage award from the Wellcome Trust Seeding Drug Discovery scheme to advance therapeutic candidate molecules into clinical evaluation for treatment of non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC).
The cell death regulatory protein FLIP is believed to be a key regulator of tumour cell survival that promotes tumour growth and resistance to standard therapies. The award will allow the partners to accelerate the optimisation and early development of first-in-class small molecule inhibitors that block FLIP's pro-survival functions. The inhibitors invented by the team have already shown efficacy in pre-clinical models of NSCLC, a disease that represents around 90% of all lung cancers diagnosed and accounts for the highest rate of cancer death worldwide, with over one million deaths annually.
This next phase of the collaboration will allow the completion of pre-clinical studies and progression of the inhibitors to first in human phase 1 clinical evaluation following regulatory approval. Trevor Perrior, Research Director at Domainex, commented: “We are delighted to continue our successful partnership with Dr. Daniel Longley, Prof. Timothy Harrison and their team at Queen's University Belfast. The additional funding secured from the Wellcome Trust is a clear endorsement of the strength of the integrated drug discovery platform of Domainex to deliver compounds with the potential to provide life-changing treatments for serious diseases. Domainex will continue to provide its expertise in medicinal chemistry, ADME and physicochemical profiling. We remain deeply committed to supporting academic translational research. We look forward to working further with Dan, Tim and their colleagues to take our jointly-discovered compounds into patients.”
Dr Daniel Longley added: “Resistance to current treatments for non-small cell lung cancer and other cancers is a major clinical problem. Our work at Queen's has demonstrated that FLIP is frequently overexpressed in non-small cell lung cancer and other cancers and that this promotes resistance to chemotherapy. More recently, we have found that FLIP also promotes resistance to radiotherapy. Targeting FLIP directly is extremely challenging; however, by combining our understanding of the biology of FLIP with the expertise of the team at Domainex, we have now developed first-in-class small-molecule FLIP inhibitors that this award from the Wellcome Trust will enable us to take all the way into clinical evaluation in patients”.
- ENDS -
Editors Notes
Cancer Research at Queen's University Belfast
The Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology (CCRCB) was developed with the explicit aim of translating basic scientific programmes into the clinical arena and is a dynamic research Centre within the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences in Queen's University Belfast. Adjacent to the Northern Ireland Clinical Cancer Centre on the Belfast City Hospital campus, CCRCB is the first Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Ireland and is one of 15 Cancer Research UK (CRUK) designated Centres of Excellence in the UK. The Centre was also awarded Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) status, one of 18 such UK Centres. For further information on our research programmes, please visit the CCRCB website: www.qub.ac.uk/ccrcb/.
About Domainex
Established in 2001, Domainex Ltd. is a privately owned, rapidly growing Cambridge, UK-based small-molecule, integrated drug discovery company that provides services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic partners globally. Services cover a wide span of the drug discovery process, from disease target validation to pre-clinical candidate nomination. Domainex's services include recombinant protein expression and use of its proprietary technology platform, Combinatorial Domain Hunting to identify soluble protein fragments for structural, biophysical and bioassay uses. Hit finding activities encompass assay development and screening utilising its BioassayBuilder and LeadBuilder portfolios. The core of the service platform is undertaking multi-parameter medicinal chemistry optimisation of hits and leads under the mantra ‘every compound counts', which can save up to 30% of average industry time.
Domainex will be moving to a new facility at Chesterford Research Park near Cambridge in summer 2016. The new facility will provide a near three-fold increased footprint and allow it to continue its growth strategy focused on providing best-in-class drug discovery services utilising its proprietary technology platforms and in-depth expertise of its skilled employees.
For more information please visit www.domainex.co.uk
About the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to improving health. We support bright minds in science, the humanities and the social sciences, as well as education, public engagement and the application of research to medicine. Our investment portfolio gives us the independence to support such transformative work as the sequencing and understanding of the human genome, research that established front-line drugs for malaria, and Wellcome Collection, our free venue for the incurably curious that explores medicine, life and art. www.wellcome.ac.uk
Media Enquiries
For Domainex, please contact: Trevor Perrior Research Director Domainex Trevor.Perrior@domainex.co.uk Tel: +44(0)1223 743170
Deborah Cockerill Sciad Communications deborah@sciad.com Tel: +44 (0)79 3031 7729
For Queen's University Belfast, please contact: Communications Office comms.office@qub.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)20 9079 3091

2017 is proving to be a landmark year for Cloud IQ. In March 2017, we announced Series A funding of £4 million from Nauta Capital, Finance Wales and Juno Capital, establishing ourselves as one of the best-funded commerce optimisation platforms, and accelerating our roadmap development. Today, we are pleased to have secured an additional £4 million from lead investor PayPal,and returning investors Nauta Capital, Finance Wales and Juno Capital. The investment cements our exclusive conversion rate optimisation partnership with PayPal, enabling ecommerce businesses using PayPal to track 100% of transactions with Cloud IQ, optimising the consumer journey and resulting in more customers. “Through our recent partnership with Cloud IQ it is clear we share a common vision to improve the consumer journey. Today, Artificial Intelligence powered technology is finally able to deliver individualised consumer experiences at scale. PayPal is excited to support Cloud IQ as they bring to market solutions that improve the overall shopping experience on both web and mobile.” Jeremy Jonker, VP, Head of Global Corporate Development at PayPal. “Cloud IQ’s proposition and market traction is impressive. We are excited by future products that Cloud IQ will bring to market through the opportunities created by this round of funding.” Carles Ferrer, London-based General Partner at Nauta Capital. “Cloud IQ is an exciting and innovative platform. The team at Cloud IQ are ambitious and are on a high growth trajectory and we’re pleased to continue to be able to support them in this latest funding round.” Finance Wales, Investment Executive Carmine Circelli. Investing in our team The funding has enabled us to establish a new engineering teams, senior hires and new offices. We have opened a new hub in Cardiff, Wales, to coordinate sales and bolster customer support, demonstrating our commitment to our customers. Strengthening our senior management team is a priority, which has led us to appoint Tim Perks as Chief Financial Officer and Nick Peart as Chief Marketing Officer. Perks is a proven CFO in the enterprise technology space, having worked with New Voice Media, Redstone and Baltimore. Peart brings a wealth of marketing experience having worked with leading global brands such as Zendesk, Adobe and Clearswift; he will lead global marketing strategy to drive brand and market awareness of Cloud IQ. To grow the team and have closed this round of funding so soon after the last one - and with the participation of PayPal - is testament to the momentum we are building at Cloud IQ. Together we are pioneering new technology which makes the internet work better for consumers, starting with eCommerce.